Free Republic

CRAIG BOWEN'S SALARY during his final year as chief of the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District was about $221,000 a year. So how did he end up retiring in December with a tax-advantaged annual pension of $284,000? The answer provides an amazing case study that highlights problems with public employee compensation and reveals tricks that allow workers to spike their pensions at the expense of their fellow employees and taxpayers. The Bowen story has some similarities to the case I examined last month of Peter Nowicki, the chief of the Moraga Orinda Fire District who was able to turn...

Fiscal Policy: California Democrats, apparently unable to curb their spending, say they may not approve a state budget until they get a tax increase. In this, as in much else, the Golden State may be starting a trend.Hand it to Democrats, both in California and nationwide. One of the great bits of political jujitsu in recent years was to portray Republicans, not themselves, as the party of tax-and-spend. Now, with control of both Congress and California's state house, they're showing their true colors. Take California. Just four years ago, the state went through the worst financial crisis in its history....

San Diegans will think this sounds awfully familiar: Eager to avoid making politically difficult decisions and happy to saddle future generations with debt, the state of California has been grossly and systematically underfunding promised benefits for retired employees for years. That's the core truth to emerge from an audit of promised health insurance coverage for state retirees released yesterday by Controller John Chiang. It put total unfunded liabilities at $47.88 billion. State leaders will pretend they had no idea the problem was this severe and will thank Chiang for enlightening them. But it has been an open secret for years...

New commission has its work cut out for it Faced with a politically intractable problem, elected officials invariably turn to blue ribbon commissions -- panels of distinguished citizens they hope will come up with palatable solutions.Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed such a commission early in his first term to deal with the state's burgeoning prison crisis, to little or no avail. The panel made sound recommendations, which the governor ignored, and the prison crisis has deepened.Now the governor, together with legislative leaders, has created a new commission, this one to deal with another intractable state problem: the soaring cost of retiree...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders Tuesday announced appointments to a commission that will report on how the state and local governments can meet the costs of providing pensions and health care to retired public employees. Gerald Parsky, an investment executive and former chair of the University of California Board of Regents, will head the 12-member panel, the Governor's Office said. The governor's other appointees, all Republicans, will join union leaders and pension experts appointed by Democratic legislative leaders. Schwarzenegger's Finance Department estimates the state would need to invest an additional $44 billion to meet its pension obligations to all...

SACRAMENTO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger may have dropped his original plan to overhaul state and local government pension systems, but he continues to warn of a potential San Diego-style meltdown of the state pension funds. The governor said this week that if he can't push a pension overhaul through the Legislature, he will place an initiative on the ballot next June. "We will continue with that, because we have to have pension reform," Schwarzenegger said Monday on a Sacramento radio talk show. "It has a potential of bankrupting the state, as you can see what happens in San Diego –...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - California's workers' compensation costs are going down, but you wouldn't know it by looking at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget proposals. They include big increases in the state's own workers' comp costs. The Republican governor's budget predicts the state's cost of dealing with job-related injuries and illnesses among its employees will jump 30 percent over two fiscal years - despite much-touted changes Schwarznegger pushed through the Legislature last April. Jim Zelinski, a spokesman for the State Compensation Insurance Fund, a quasi-governmental agency that administers the state's workers' compensation program, said savings from the 2004 legislation and cost-cutting bills...